Poetry Reading Series
Co-sponsored by the University Professors Program and the Humanities Foundation at Boston University, the Poetry Reading Series strives to make poetry a fundamental part of university and community life. By presenting the work of both renowned and emerging poets, the series attempts to broaden our vision of poetry‚s concerns and effects. In the past, the series has featured readings by Jorie Graham, Thomas Sayers Ellis, Geoffrey Hill, Marcia Karp, Robert Pinsky, Gjertrud Schnackenberg, Marilyn Hacker, Saskia Hamilton, and Linda Gregg, among others.
All readings are free, open to the public and take place in the College of General Studies, 871 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston MA 02215 unless stated otherwise.
The 2007-2008 Schedule:
Remembering Alberto de Lacerda
Monday March 3 at 6 p.m.
Katzenberg Center, 3rd Floor,
College of General Studies
871 Commonwealth Avenue
An evening to remember and celebrate the life and work of Alberto de Lacerda. Readings
of his poetry and personal tributes by Rosanna Warren, Christopher Ricks, John Silber,
Jhumpa Lahiri, and others.
Alberto de Lacerda, considered one of Portugal’s greatest poets in the second half of
the twentieth century, was Professor Emeritus of Poetics and Comparative Literature at
Boston University. Along with publishing over twelve volumes of poetry, many of which
were translated into English, French, German, Spanish, Dutch, and Bengali by, amongst
others, Octavio Paz, Arthur Waley, and André Frénaud, he was also a collage artist, a
collector and connoisseur of all the arts, a brilliant critic, and a gifted broadcaster
and linguist, in short a man described by Edith Sitwell as one of the most cultivated
persons she had known. He was born in 1928 in Mozambique, and died in 2007 in London.
Stephen Burt and David Blair
Monday, March 24th at 5 p.m.
Katzenberg Center, 3rd Floor
College of General Studies
871 Commonwealth Avenue
Stephen Burt's latest books include a full-length book of poems, Parallel Play (Graywolf Press), a chapbook of poems and prose about the WNBA, Shot Clocks (Harry Tankoos), and a critical study, The Forms of Youth: 20th-Century Poetry and Adolescence (Columbia University Press) A collection of his essays on recent poetry will appear in 2009. His essays and reviews appear semi-regularly in several periodicals, among them the Times Literary Supplement and the Boston Review. He teaches at Harvard.
David Blair’s first book Ascension Days was chosen by Thomas Lux for the 2007 Del Sol Press Poetry Award. His poems have appeared in the anthologies The Best of Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet and Zoland Poetry, as well as in many journals, including Boston Review, Fence, Fulcrum, The Greensboro Review, The Harvard Review, and Ploughshares. Since 1997, he has taught at The New England Institute of Art, where he is an associate professor. Before that, he studied philosophy at Fordham University and creative writing at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro. He lives in Somerville, Massachusetts, with his wife Sabrina and their daughter Astrid.
Jean Valentine
Thursday, April 10th at 5 p.m.
Katzenberg Center, 3rd Floor
College of General Studies
871 Commonwealth Avenue
Jean Valentine is the author of ten books of poetry including Door in the Mountain: New and Collected Poems (Wesleyan), which won the 2004 National Book Award for poetry. She has also edited a collection of essays on poet Eleanor Ross Taylor. Valentine’s first book, published in 1965, was the recipient of the Yale Younger Poets Prize. Valentine has also been the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Maurice English Prize, a Sara Teasdale Award, and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, The Bunting Institute, The Rockefeller Foundation, and The New York Council for the Arts. Most recently, Valentine received the 2006 Morton Dauwen Zabel Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Her next book of poetry, Little Boat, is forthcoming from Wesleyan in October 2007. Valentine has taught at Sarah Lawrence College, the Graduate Writing Program of New York University, Columbia University, and the 92nd Street Y in Manhattan, among other universities and colleges. Jean Valentine was born in Chicago, earned her B.A. from Radcliffe College, and now splits her time between New York City and Ireland.
Readings will be followed by bookselling and signing. If you have any questions, please contact the University Professors Program at (617) 353-4020 or Meg Tyler (mtyler@bu.edu).
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